


Tracking a Dragon

by jarethsdragon



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Noodle Dragons, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:09:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28492914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarethsdragon/pseuds/jarethsdragon
Relationships: Genji Shimada/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 4





	Tracking a Dragon

Katrina was sitting in her dark hotel room, staring at the generic box, when she got the call.

Once more, she had received a voice-only call on her ancient phone with a blocked number. Was she interested in some work? “Doing what” she always answered. Always, there was a vague sort of answer about “serving her country”, but then there came the inevitable dickering about what it would take for her to show up with her custom mech rig and do whatever she was told. Then she’d shuffle off somewhere in her mech and take it into one of the chop shops that were willing to take even her money and her unregistered and unlicensed mech into the back to fix it. Then she’d rent a garage or something and hole up until they called her again.

She was good at her job—enough to keep a burner phone registered to no one with an address that was an alkali spring in the wastelands—and could at least make a living doing this.

One more day. One more night.

Inevitably, she got her pay—a random collection of the inventory that nobody cared about and then a few cashier’s checks in various amounts that would equal her agreed upon amount—in an anonymous box. She twisted the rickety handle and dropped down the cargo shelf before loading the crate up. The others were packing up as well and began vanishing into the shadows on their motorcycles or mechs as Overwatch did... whatever it was that they did. They had already hauled away the people they caught and the weapons were piled in a large cargo vehicle to be counted and documented.

A light blue glowing caught her eye and she looked over as a muscular man in a heavy, hooded jacket carried his box away. The glowing wasn’t some kind of Omnic prosthetic or anything—she was sure of that. Not a mech—there were only 4 mechs tonight and since she was in one and the slick pink one was a regular with Overwatch had left as soon as the last round was fired and the other two Junkers who had limped away soon after. He went to a dark corner that had a broken streetlight flickering over it and shifted things around so that he could sling some kind of large, hard case on his back and Katrina stared at him.

The glow slithered around him strangely and she gasped to see that it appeared to be long, slender snakes emerge. One trailed down his arm from his shoulder to his wrist and the other gave a lithe, cat-like leap to perch on top of the box. He paid no attention to either of them—even when the one on the box sat up and stared at her over his shoulder.

Katrina frowned and shook her head as the man turned the corner and disappeared. “I gotta get some sleep,” she muttered to no one in particular. “I’m seeing things.”

Everything tied down, she stumbled back around to the front. That was obviously what it was—a serious lack of sleep as she had gone cross-country for three days to make it here. A uniformed man walked up to her with a smug smile on his face, but as soon as Katrina scowled, he looked up at her rig and then backed away. She frowned at his retreat, some sixth-sense telling her that he was not going away sheerly because of her.

Then she saw the dim green lights above her rig.

“What the fuck?!” she exploded.

The shadowy gray form had dim green lights on it and jerked just as she shouted. With a feline grace, it sat up and she could see the green V shape dip down to look at her. “Well... this is awkward.”

Katrina tilted her head at the unfamiliar lilt. “What the hell are you doing on my mech?”

It scrambled in a limber way to kneel on top. “Your.... mech?” It peered down at her and then the rig. There was no way to tell, but his voice suddenly trembled slightly. “I thought it was... a friend’s. I... was mistaken.”

Katrina snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. “That doesn’t answer my question. What are you doing up there?”

The form scrambled and she saw it unplug something—probably something on that slick armor—from the power port on the top. Then it slammed the panel shut and hopped down. She stared at it as it came forward into her headlights with preternatural silence. Any normal person or Omnic would have patting footsteps or squeaking joints, but this was some kind of reinforced silence.

“And who are you?” the armored man asked.

“No one,” she snapped. “I’m leaving.”

“Don’t leave on my account,” he purred. “Come... we’ll get some tea or coffee—.”

Katrina snorted, squinting in the headlights at the smooth curves and the lights. “You’re Genji—from Overwatch.”

The form gave her an elegant bow. “In the flesh—sort of.” He straightened up gracefully and slid closer to her. “And who are you?”

“Leaving,” she snapped. With that, she climbed up to the large command compartment and flicked some switches to get the engines to rumble awake. With a casual, sarcastic salute, she lowered the canopy and smiled in the dim cabin lights as the hydraulics hissed and locked it closed. The Omnic ninja—the famous Omnic ninja—nodded and saluted her back as she jerked the handles to get it to turn around.

The head’s up display came up and she reached to tap a point miles away in a tiny town. A dot appeared on the display and then yellow numbers of her reservation confirmation at a camping ground appeared. One of her customizations was that after ten miles, she could kick in autopilot and it would drive the mech for her for 255 minutes—so she could sit back for a bit and watch the wilderness go past.

Well, she had met the Overwatch ninja. Genji—just “Genji”—was practically the public face of Overwatch. A lot of it had been a while ago—when he had saved an Omnic monk at a equal rights rally—but since then he was often in the news. Supposedly, he was a nightmare to actually interview because he could simply escape and disappear at a moment’s notice, but he was often in the photographs in a variety of poses that ranged from solemn, Zen postures to official, attention posts to irreverent and almost playful poses. He even had a rather iconic picture on an Overwatch recruitment poster with two fingers at his nose level and sitting cross-legged on that pink mech under a cherry tree.

The scrubby brush and the trees flicked past as the mech kept going to her destination and she sat back to let the autopilot do its rather expensive job. Inevitably, her eyes closed and her bruised body relaxed until she was dozing, relaxed as the central cab rocked back and forth. It would alert her when the four and a half hours were up and, honestly, it would probably be sunrise before she saw the campsite and she could probably catch their breakfast special if she slept now and got up to pilot herself the other two hours.

Some time later, Katrina heard... snoring that was loud enough to wake her up. At first, she was certain that the k-cog was slipping again—it did that in rigs this old and would need to be fitted into place before she enabled the large machine guns again. Content with that explanation, she squirmed a bit and saw that she only had a few minutes of autopilot left. Not what she would have chosen, but she could get to the campsite now.

The late night guard let her in when she showed her reservation permit and she took the back trail around the other campers to settle her mech at the back corner. Popping the canopy, she climbed out and drug the heavy cord to the outlet. Her mech hummed and a small green light blinked happily at her to indicate it was charging. Flipping another switch, she enabled the blackout canopy and the proximity alarms—hardly necessary since the campsite was only about 25% full this time of year—and climbed back inside for a long nap.

There was a second, long blacked out period that she slept before she realized she was hearing snoring again. “Fuck—what the hell is wrong now?” she muttered. “I’m not even moving.”

The snoring softened with a low rustling sound from behind her seat, but continued in its low, rhythmic buzz. Katrina flipped the cabin lights on and heard another snort as she scrambled around the padded seat. There was a sharp grunt and she gasped to see... something coiled there on top of the heavy coat that she usually had slung over the back of the seat.

The long green body slithered sleepily and a small, almost feline head with a fluffy mane around the horns looked up at her with several slow blinks. Katrina gaped at the creature as it flipped its head back and forth and then coiled up in her warm coat again with a sibilant hiss.

“What... are you?” she whispered at it.

That made the creature uncoil again to look up at her with reptilian eyes that blinked slowly again. “What are you?” it whispered back.

She jumped, almost falling off the seat. Her breath panted in and out for a reckless moment as she tried to think. Whatever it was, it seemed intelligent as it scrabbled up and stared at her from its carelessly graceful drape over the back of her pilot’s chair. A long, thin, forked tongue flicked out to taste the air and it seemed to dryly consider her.

“What are you?” it whispered again.

“I... I’m... Katrina,” she rasped out.

“Katrina.... Katrina....” it nodded with the mane flowing around as if it was in water. “Kat? Kitty kitty kitty kat?”

“And who are you?” she snorted back.

It gave her what could only be seen as a grin and jumped to sit on the chair to look up at her. “I’m Kitakaze.”

“Kitakaze,” she repeated slowly. It nodded and coiled into a pile of scales and tiny, sharp claws. It was too much like a snake and she fumbled into one of the tiny compartments and dug out a chocolate granola bar. With a shaking hand, she tore the foil open and offered it to the creature. “Want something to eat?”

Kitakaze unfolded and perched up on its back legs with a peculiar grace, like a meerkat peeking up. “What is that?”

She looked at the wrapper. “It’s... an organic, fair trade granola bar with chocolate chips.” Slowly, she broke off a piece and put it in her mouth. “See? Yummy.”

It sniffed the cramped air and cocked its head. “Kitty kat should not eat that.”

“What?”

“Kitty-kat should eat good food. Fish. Rice. Nori and ramen.” It made an indistinct gesture with its front paws as if it was making a ball of clay. “Dango.”

She glanced at the dimly glowing clock numbers. “They have a breakfast?”

It gave a little cheer and coiled up again before giving her an imperious wave. “Bring food.”

“What?!”

“Bring food.”

“Umm.... I don’t think they have any of that for breakfast?” was all she could gasp out.

“Bring food.”

She groaned. “Fine. I’ll bring back something. Maybe some bacon or something. Some fruit.”

It nodded and then slithered in some way that defied description to coil up and then disappear behind her seat. What else was there to do? Katrina groaned softly and popped the canopy to climb out. The large, fake log cabin did a breakfast buffet each morning before starting activities and the lessons and trips that they offered to the campers. She could eat there at the long trestle tables, or she could take it back with her.

As usual, there were rolls and muffins and toast and sweet bread treats, so she snagged some raisin toast and a little blueberry muffin. There was a pile of almost too perfectly yellow scrambled eggs and a pan of bacon slices that she could serve herself, along with a stack of golden waffles next to a chilled fruit salad. Then there was dispenser after dispenser of not-terrible coffee in regular, hazelnut, or decaf that she could either get by the cup or a branded thermos full for a paltry extra fee.

Laden down with two takeout containers and a shiny new thermos, she made her way across the campground to her mech and popped the canopy again. It looked much like she had left it—an apparently shut down rig with a sturdy box tied down to the back. Climbing in, she lowered the canopy again and opened the first box.

As the smell of bacon and eggs and grapes filled the compartment the little Kitakaze floated out and landed on the console with a quizzical air. Ever so delicately, it reached out and plucked up a grape to stare at it.

“This is not dango.”

“It’s a grape.”

It rolled the little red thing around slightly. “A grape. Not dango?”

“No. It’s good for you.”

Ever so slowly, the reptilian tongue flicked out and wrapped slowly around it, almost squeezing it, before dragging it into its fanged mouth. There was an audible, crisp sound and it chewed slowly before nodding.

“It is... not bad.” Carefully it picked out another one and bit into it before looking at the juicy inside. “It is not dango.”

Katrina sighed and rolled her eyes. “It is not dango.”

She opened the other container and let it have a messy bite of eggs. To that, it merely nodded and began to eat face first like a dog. Messy, but not completely disgusting as it finished off the eggs and then picked up a slice of crispy bacon. The bits of yellow egg were all over its whiskers and mane as it crunched thoughtfully on the slice.

“So... what are you?”

“Ryu.”

Katrina blinked anxiously and cocked her head before taking another sip of the coffee. “Ryu. What does that mean?”

It looked up at her and then at the thermos. “What is that?”

“This? Coffee.”

“I like tea.” It gave an odd sort of burp. “Where is tea?” It’s head tilted back curiously. “What’s that?”

“Coffee. Some emergency water and a packet of some sports drink.” She offered the thermos. “I’ve put in a ton of sugar and cream. It’s not bad.”

Kitakaze nodded and took the thermos with two paws. Slowly it raised the thermos and took a hesitant gulp. Two little ear... ear flaps went up with a little mewl of surprise before it began gulping the coffee down. Katrina giggled and took the thermos away. Creamy brown drops went down its whiskers before it sneezed.

“That is... not bad,” Kitakaze nodded slowly.

Katrina nodded sleepily. “It’s not too bad. But I’m only here for like another day or two.” The dragon’s head tilted curiously. “Now, I want to sleep a bit.” It nodded and coiled up again. “I’ll turn on the vents so that this doesn’t turn into an oven.”

She clicked another switch to open the vents and lean the chair back slightly more comfortably. Kitakaze stretched out and climbed over to lay over her curves. Its paws pushed and kneaded like a cat until it found a comfortable hollow to curl up in. Then, quite content, it purred and eventually began snoring.

Katrina slept hard for the next hours. Despite the mech, battles were stressful and tiring and being on the outskirts of it was even more so without extensive support and infrastructure that a group like Overwatch gave their people. At lunch, she got to shower—finally—and took the chance to get some snacks before going back to the mech.

Kitakaze poked the foil bags of chips and cookies as she undid the straps and pulled out the crate. She grinned up at the creature and tapped the box. “Should we see what’s in it?”

Without waiting for a reply, she opened the crate. There was the envelope of cashier’s checks, as she expected, but then there was a motley collection of a pair of boxes of ammo, a larger box that held a collection of freeze dried meals, a new belt for her machine guns, some random spare parts and pieces. “Hey, Kitakaze—there’s even a... something.” She held up the box with its strange markings. “Can you read this?”

The dragon snorted and opened an eye towards the box in her hand. “It is a thing. A box.”

“I know that short stuff. Can you—? Never mind.” She opened the box and was surprised to find it contained a book. She paged through it, examining the big pictures of pots and pans and what appeared to be food being prepared. “It’s a... cookbook, maybe?” Kitakaze was unimpressed and began crawling over the console and tapping things. “Hey... maybe if you’re here for a while, we can check these recipes out. And stop that before you break something.”

“What is this?”

“That’s... NO! Don’t touch that.” Katrina puffed out an impatient breath and reached over to pull its claws away from the console. “Do not touch anything.” She threw everything back into the crate and carried it around the back and strapped it down again. Her rear lights blinked off and on and she scrambled around to the cockpit. “Come on, Kita. Just stop, okay?”

The ryu looked up at her with its paw the switch. “What? What does this do?”

“Stop it you menace.” Katrina plopped down on the chair before scooping the dragon up and settling it in her lap. “We need to set some ground rules.”

“What are ‘ground rules’?”

“You know—rules about how we behave.” It reached for a new switch and Katrina slapped its paws. “Now... rule one is don’t touch the controls.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you shooting anything, or launching us into a lake or anything.” It was already reaching for another low switch. “Now, behave.”

It scowled and tossed its mane. “I don’t like that.”

“Well, I’m captain and you have to obey.”

“I don’t like that word either.” It scowled and flicked out its long tongue. “I don’t like ‘no’ or ‘rules’ or ‘obey’ or ‘stop’.” Katrina scowled at it. “Those are bad words.”

“Cope with it. My mech equals my rules.” She looked around and hit the blackout button so that the windshield went black again. “Look, I don’t know where you’re from or what you’re doing here, but I’ll be damned if some stupid dragon—.”

“Yes!”

Katrina blinked in confusion. “What?!”

“That’s the word. Your word.”

“Dragon?”

“I’m dragon!”

“Fine. You’re a dragon. I cannot believe that I’m saying this, but even you have to have rules and I’m pretty sure that you don’t want everyone seeing you, right?” It nodded uncertainly. “Look... I’m going to head back to... to a hotel. There’s more room and we can talk and probably get something decent to eat.”

“Dango!”

“Uhh... I still don’t know what that is, but more room would be good.” She began flipping switches. The status screens showed up, indicating she had fully charged main battery and her backups were online and charged, too. “Let’s get a move on before someone decides that we need investigating.”

She climbed out long enough to unplug and then check the panels and cargo gate. Everything was working—even the rear lights and the overhead spotlights for search and rescue that blinked several times as she closed up the last panels—and she climbed back in. The reactor hummed to life and the servos began churning as they began clomping to the main path to the exit.

Once they were going cross-country again, she turned on the vents, laughing as the dragon propped up on the console and raised its head so that the vent blew the fresher air through its mane. It’s tongue lolled out like a puppy’s and it seemed to smile as the landscape flew past.

“We are headed to a hotel a few miles south of Dorado,” she explained as it wriggled in apparent delight. “We can lay low there as long as we don’t attract the attention of any of the Deadlock thugs.”

“Boo!” Kitakaze crowed with its head up like a baying wolf.

“Yes, boo. Boo, Deadlock.” She grunted as she took a slightly different tack to avoid a gorge. “So, let’s see if we can avoid their attention, huh?”

“Boo.... booooooo.” The dragon let out a short, high-pitched barking sound as if a fox was laughing. “Boo boo booooo boo.”

“You are crazy,” she laughed. “But hey—I guess I am too. I’m talking to a dragon after all.”

They got to a dry riverbed and stopped for a few moments for Katrina to squat beside some sagebrush and for Kitakaze to investigate a few dusty pebbles. The heat rippled off the rocks and dust and sand, making illusions of distant pools and rivers. Finally, she drank the last of the coffee and watched the dragon coil around a large rock. “You ready to start up again?”

The dragon huffed and a cloud of dust rose up like smoke. “Boring.”

“Yeah—but we’re not going to last long out here. It’s too damn hot.” It rolled its eyes and floated to the mech without a reply. Katrina climbed in after it and turned on the air conditioning. “What do you think? I even got a place near a pool.”

“Why do you think this is good?” It shrugged slightly and tossed its mane. “It is a green table with holes and balls. Why should I care?”

“Not that kind of pool.” She laughed as the raspberry it blew. “It is like a pond—but it should be fine. We can go swimming and get out of this heat.” Katrina grinned at the creature. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I like swimming.”

She laughed slightly nervously as she pressed its paws away from the weapons console. “I do too.”

The hotel was yet another seedy place that didn’t ask too many questions about what was going on, but the bed was clean enough and there was small pool in a recreation building that was open for “adults only” hours after dark when the lifeguard went home. They—rather, she got a take out meal of cheap Chinese food—Kitakaze gobbled up all of the horseradish mustard and eggrolls as if they were candy—and waited for sundown. Then they slipped around the crowd of exiting families and children and teens and managed to get a half hour of solitary swimming before the security guard came poking around. Kitakaze curled up close to her as he strolled past, its glow hidden in the pool lights.

Finally she got back to the hotel room and showered before pulling on a loose, thin t-shirt. “That was fun, Kitakaze.”

The dragon danced around on the bed before curling up into a knot. Katrina grinned and laid down beside it. For some reason, it felt like she was next to a very warm and contented cat that pushed against her side. And then it purred, a furnace hot cat with a rumbling deep in its chest, and Katrina smiled as it soothed her to sleep.

She didn’t know what it was that made her wake up. The hotel room was still quite silent and dark. The hotel air conditioning worked just fine and hummed with its circulation of cool air. For once, even the hotel plumbing was not letting out the usual substandard dripping.

So what was it that woke her up?

Kitakaze let out a short snort and rolled languidly. It stretched and began snoring again. There was still nothing that Katrina could figure out, so she snuggled into the not bad pillow and closed her eyes again. The little dragon let out a hiccup and blindly she reached out to stroke its smooth scales.

“Go to sleep, twirp,” she groaned. “We don’t have to check out until 11.”

There was a patient beat of silence before a smooth tenor murmured, “That’s not a nice thing to say to an honorable spirit dragon.”

Katrina shot up with an anxious squeal and tugged the blankets up over her. There, in a quiet corner of the room was a dim green glow over smooth metallic armor. Katrina screamed again and heard the faint scrabbling of scales and claws as she snatched a pillow and threw it at the armored form.

It batted the little pillow away and let out a soft chuckle. “That isn’t nice.”

“What the ever loving fucking hell are you doing in my room?!” she screamed.

Katrina scrambled for her small hand weapon—a laser pistol in the bedside table—and was going to shoot the intruder, but Kitakaze burst out and hurtled through the air towards him. It leapt up like a collie puppy, hopping to and fro and coiling all around the metal intruder.

“Kitakaze-san, you snuck off again,” he muttered. Coyly, he reached down and the dragon coiled around his metallic arm. “What am I supposed to say to everyone?”

That made the little dragon pause—frozen in the air—and look at her. It shook its main thoughtfully and looked up at the metallic face. “Kitty-kitty-kat.”

“Who the fuck are you and what are you doing with my dragon?!” she snapped angrily.

He chuckled and cradled the little creature as it stuck its tongue out at her. “It is actually my dragon.”

Katrina threw the pillow at him and scrambled to snatch up Kitakaze. The dragon simply curved into the air just a half inch from her grasp. “God—what the fuck are you doing in here?!”

Genji batted the pillow aside with a chuckle. “What’s the matter?”

“You are! Now get the fuck out of my room!”

He shook his head. “While that does sound... inviting, I would dearly love to talk to you first.” The dragon coiled around his wrist languidly only to stare at her curiously and flick its tongue in the air. “Namely, why do you have my dragon?”

She stuck her tongue out and swiped at the phone. There was a thunk and only a half thought later she realized she had heard a whistling through the air. Just under her palm, the shape of a silvery star glistened in the room and soft, short sparks crackled for a moment in the ruins of plastic.

Katrina glanced over at the metal man and then the remains of the phone. At least, she thought he couldn’t see her shiver in the tangle of the linens. Her bone dry swallowing, the jittery way her hands fluttered helplessly in the air and the terrified little panting sounds must have been amusing because he gave a little, metallic chuckle.

“Shall we talk? Or are you going to keep going?” he asked.

Katrina cursed wildly in her head, but probably it was not a great idea to start on him. Even now she could see one slender, metallic hand curl in a highly improbable way and three more stars appear between his folded fingers. The wretched dragon watched her with a toss of its head and its mane curled in the air by itself as if it was flowing in puffs of air.

“Now that I have your attention, I will repeat myself. What do you think you are doing with my dragon?”

“O-o-o-okay—it’s your dragon.” She held up her hands and her eyes flicked between him and it. “Sure. It’s... your dragon.”

“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” the dragon purred in response.

Katrina scowled at it. Great—now she had a prominent member of Overwatch snarling and sniping at her for something that really wasn’t her fault. God only knew what kind of trouble that could lead to—especially with her rather precarious line of work. It wasn’t her fault, but she’d be the one to catch hell for it.

“Kitty, kitty,” it whispered as it waved at her. “Here, kitty kitty.”

She scowled at it. “You traitor.”

Genji rose to his feet with a not-quite-silent whir of servos and hydraulics. “For the last time, how did you get my dragon?”

Katrina glared at the stars and the vague outline of the sword at his back. “I didn’t do it. He—she... whatever climbed into my mech.”

“Kitakaze.... what did you do?” he asked with a playful, exasperated tone.

“Took a nap,” it answered with an innocent tone and another toss of its mane. “We went swimming.”

“Swimming? That sounds like fun,” Genji snorted. “Now—what did you do?”

“Like it said,” she snapped angrily. “I didn’t know about the little stowaway until we were already breaking up and I had gotten my loot.” She shook her head and added, “I was in my mech and half way here before I knew about anything.”

“Stowaway?” Genji chuckled, “You climbed in a strange mech and then what were we going to do? How was I supposed to find you?” It made a chittering sound and coiled into a lazy loop around his shoulder. “What was I to do without you?”

“Kitty, kitty, cat,” it repeated slowly. “Kitty cat has no dango.”

“No dango?” Genji parroted back. “Well, poor kitty cat.”

“Kitty cat has no dango, no onigiri, no taiyaki. No nothing.” The glowing body reflected strangely in the arcs and curves of the ninja’s armor. It stamped its foot on the metal covered cheek. “Poor kitty cat has no good food.”

“Poor kitty cat.” Genji looked at her. “Well, Kitakaze—we will help, right?”

The dragon nodded enthusiastically before pushing off and floating down to perch on its back legs and look up at her like a meerkat peering over the plains. “Poor kitty cat.”

“Right,” she scowled. “So, now that you are found, how about letting me get some sleep?”

“I want dango,” insisted the dragon.

Genji laughed lightly and said, “Has he been—?”

“He’s been like this the entire time,” she grunted sourly. “Nothing’s ever been good enough for his royal majesty.”

That made the ninja snort with laughter and the stars in his hand disappeared. “He is pain at times.”

“Great. Now you have him back. Now get out of my room.”

“Prickly little thing, aren’t you?” He reached out and stroked down the mane as if he was stroking a cat. “Are you always like this or are you hungry?”

“Poor kitty cat is hungry,” Kitakaze offered. “No good food.” There was a soprano rumbling and the dragon stroked its underbelly. “Need dango.”

“You and your sweets, Kitakaze-san. What are we going to do with you?” He bowed, the green lights glowing with the movement. “You are always thinking with your stomach.”

“Need dangooooo,” it moaned theatrically with a swaying faint.

Katrina flopped on the bed and pulled the last pillow over her head. “Make it stop. Make it stop.”

Genji obligingly said, “Stop it, Kitakaze-san.”

It chanted even more slowly as its body curled in a flexible back bend that brought its antlers close to its back and Genji’s elbow. “Daaaaannnnngooooo.”

She groaned and rolled off the bed. Tugging on her clothes, she snatched up her card from her pocket. “How about I get it some chocolate? Before I strangle it?”

“Not chocolate. Dango!”

Genji’s laugh rolled out in the room. “I can help.”

“Anything!”

“Come with me,” he whispered. “I’ll make sure that—.”

“Just go.”

Genji led her out and began walking down the row of anonymous doors to the rooms. She glanced anxiously around and saw only the expected motley collection of cars and motorcycles. Then she finally saw it—a bubblegum pink mech nestled in the shadowy corner of the parking lot surrounded by high vans and a heavy pickup truck. Kitakaze must have been watching her, because it shot away from them and streaked across the parking lot like green lightning. The mech turned a strange, sickly blend of green glowing against the pink paint as the dragon began gliding over the surface.

Genji paused and leaned closer to laugh in her ear. “Kitakaze must have thought that you had a similar mech.”

“What the hell is it doing?” Already she was scrambling past him. “It’s going to get into trouble.”

“Don’t worry. D’va keeps snacks and sodas in one of her storage compartments and they are good friends.” He laughed again and there was a slight reverberation in the tones as they bounced around the cement facade of the building. “She’s waiting for Kitakaze to return so that they can play video games and eat together.”

“But—.”

Instead of logically going to wherever it was they were going, Genji only shouted, “I’m getting dango!” 

Instantly, there was a sharp stillness and the dragon sat up on its haunches on top of the pink mech like a spike. Then another lightning flicker and it was on Genji’s shoulder, tapping on the metal impatiently. Katrina didn’t dare laugh as he took her hand and they started walking down to the next door.

Apparently, the armor was very high tech indeed because he merely waved his hand and the electronic lock let out an incredibly soft series of beeps and then a green light came on and the door was unlocked. He tugged on the L shaped doorknob and strolled in.

A petite young woman in a colorful jumpsuit was sprawled on the bed with a bright pink game console in her hands. She glanced and gave them an indistinct nod before blowing a pink bubble that popped over her lips and then staring at the flickering screen again.

Genji gave her a careless wave, “Hey, D’va—we found the rascal.”

“Achievement unlocked,” she chirped.

Genji’s shoulder rolled as he laughed. “Sure—achievement unlocked. ‘Find the stowaway dragon before it causes some kind of panic’.”

She grinned as she kept staring and then called out, “Dango’s in the cooler, Kita.”

The dragon wriggled and leapt down like a curious cat. It bounced around the room and finally scrambled up to climb on top of the white, styrofoam cooler in the corner of the room. Katrina gasped to hear the ripping and rending as it clawed the white box.

Finally, Genji let out a laugh and released Katrina’s hand to go over and pry open the cooler. The green dragon scrambled into it with its tail spinning into circles as it slithered in with a wild cry of “Dango!”.

She couldn’t resist creeping closer and then laughing at the loud gnawing sounds. Kitakaze pushed its head out with its cheeks full. “So, I guess that you’re going to finally shut up?” It looked up at her and nodded slightly. Hesitantly, she patted the flowing mane. “Great—I can get some sleep.”

No sooner had she stood and turned than it flashed around her and was between her and the door. She gasped as it grew... just grew... until it was as thick as a cherry tree trunk and the coils of glowing green almost covered the generic hotel room door. “No, no, kitty, kitty.” It swirled like smoke to hang in the air a new way as it scolded her with a wave of a clawed finger. “Kitty kitty cat needs good food.”

Katrina heard a crash behind her and swells of tenor laughter. It wasn’t hard to picture Genji falling down and laughing behind her. “I’m good, Kitakaze. I just want to sleep.”

“Kitty kitty cat can sleep here.”

“Oh no! No... just no. I’m fine. I’m going to be fine going to my room and getting sleep.” She giggled at the dragon as it waggled a finger at her as if it was going to scold her—again. Genji sucked in a noisy gasp of breath and then began laughing again with another crash of metal. “Seriously, I am going to be fine.”

“No, no, no, kitty cat.”

“Let me out, okay?” She sighed and shook her head. “I’m going back to my room.”

Genji finally caught his breath and staggered up next to her. “Come on, Kitakaze-san. You have gotten your dango, so now it’s time to sleep.”

“Right—sleep,” she whispered. “I really need to get some sleep.”

Kitakaze swelled to entire fill the doorway. “Kitty kat needs good food!”

Katrina looked over her shoulder and sure enough Genji was slouched comfortably on the thin hotel carpet, holding his side and she could hear him stifling his laughter. “Look—whatever looney bin I fell in, all I want is to get some sleep.”

The young lady on the bed giggled as her game console played a high pitched melody. “Kita—quit being a pain.” Her face was lit up with blue for a moment before the screen turned red and it began some dramatic refrain. “I thought you wanted to have some Mountain Dew and Doritos with me.”

The dragon’s head turned to stare at her and Katrina saw its tongue lap at its whiskers. It seemed to shrink down and it’s neck craned to try to see the console. It shrank to fill only half the door before Katrina tried to scoot past.

Immediately, Kitakaze swelled again and it let out a little hissing puff. “Kitty katrina needs help. Food.” It pointed to the bed. “A nest for kitty kat kittens.”

Genji must have finally rallied because he was behind her with barely a sound. “I don’t think she wants that.”

Katrina looked over her shoulder with a scowl. “Will you kindly tell him to stop?!”

Genji’s voice dripped into a sarcastic deadpan tone. “Stop it, Kitakaze.”

D.Va shrugged on the bed and added, “Or else I am not sharing the Mountain Dew.”

Kitakaze pulled itself up stiffly with a mortified expression on its face. Glowing green eyes darted uncertainly between Katrina and D.Va. “I don’t like that,” it whispered with a distinct, luminous pout. “I don’t like ‘stop’ or ‘obey’ or rules or ‘no’ or ‘captain’.”

The young girl jerked the console wildly. “Come on, Kita. I’m almost at the checkpoint.”

“Those are bad words,” it muttered.

It shrank down with an even more uncertain mewl. Finally, it was hanging in the air with a question mark curl in its tail, staring at the room and each person with an air of confusion. It said something that Katrina didn’t catch before its paws hit the ground and it crawled over to hop on the bed. It gave Genji a rude noise—something between a fart and a raspberry—and curled up sullenly and turned its back to Genji and Katrina.

“And that’s the ball game,” Genji muttered. He put a gentle hand on Katrina’s shoulder. She jerked in surprise and looked at him. “Don’t worry. He’ll sulk until she completes the level and pulls out her Mountain Dew.”

She gave him a nervous glance and then nodded slowly. “I guess so.”

“Come on—let’s get you going.”

Just like that, he was hustling her out the door. Katrina gave one last glance to the curled up dragon and sighed, “I guess.” The door closed and she sighed before looking at the shadowed and metallic form behind her. “You know something? I think I’m going to miss it.”

Genji shrugged and let out a chuckle. “He does grow on you. But hey—you have places to go and people to see, right? No time for a lonely dragon, right?”

Katrina was even less certain as he waved down the line of doors. Her steps felt like lead and she wasn’t more than three doors down before she glanced behind her again. “It’s... okay, right? I mean—it’s got dango and Dew and whatever.” She stopped to watch a shadow flicker across the parking lot—a cat. “What is dango anyway?”

Genji’s voice was a low, thoughtful purr as he replied, “I could show you if you like?” Katrina blinked and looked at him with an unconscious shiver which only made him chuckle. “It is a Japanese dessert.”

“Oh.” She paused and stared blindly at a generic beater vehicle that looked like it was parts from three other things that may or may not have been cars. “I guess that it....”

“Kitakaze does like his sweets,” Genji murmured, standing beside her and staring over the parking lot. “When I... got him, I was young and I... had a monstrous sweet tooth.”

Katrina looked at him and frowned. “And never gained a pound, huh?”

The helmeted head nodded up and down. “It made everyone crazy. I’d be raiding the cupboards and eating everything and when I was locked down, Kitakaze was out grabbing everything it could.” He let out a metallic chuckle. “Once, it was a whole bag of sugar and Kitakaze ripped a hole in it and simply poured it in its mouth until the bag was empty. My... my... father was horrified that evening.”

“Horrified?”

“His afternoon green tea was not sweetened.”

Katrina stared at him blankly for a moment and gave an awkward shrug and embarrassed laugh. “That would... be—.”

“He was horrified and very, very angry.” He gave a half shrug and rolled his hands in the air. “He took two cups of green tea each sweetened with two teaspoons of raw sugar with his afternoon medications and two shortbread biscuits. Every afternoon, without fail, he would come in at 3:30, have his tea. The world stopped for this ritual and anyone who interrupted it would have hell to pay.”

He fell abruptly silent and still and Katrina took it as a comfortable silence rather than the kind of awkward silence that usually came before an even more awkward parting. But the silence continued and she felt compelled to reply, “My dad was kind of the same. Every morning he had to have two cups of black coffee, two white bread toasts with butter and strawberry jelly, an egg over easy, and two slices of bacon. He used to say that nothing short of the Omnic War came between him and his breakfast.”

“He was in the war?”

“Unit 555 of Infantry, out of Fort Dix.” She huffed out some breath as the impersonal facts rolled out. “He said that he fought to defend his country, that he had taken a bullet to his leg and shrapnel to his ass, and that it was his God-given right to have a good breakfast before he went to work.” She gave a nod and patted the steel column holding up the overhang over the doors. “Construction. He got out after the war and said he didn’t want to retrain or anything and that building was what he loved to do, so he signed up with a company and stayed there for fifteen years before finally becoming a foreman and general contractor for five years. Then, after twenty years, he retired to Florida, opened up a bar, and he and Mom....”

She shrugged again. “Mom had a good life. He worked hard—sometimes fifty hours a week and sometimes sixty. He said that sixty was enough for any man to work in a week and that it was Mom’s job to make sure that whatever he brought in was enough to last.” She laughed. “Then when he got his bar, he was doing sixty hours a week at the bar. He loved it—called it ‘Gator’s Place’—and then Mom sold it when he passed and she had enough to live on until she died.” She shrugged again. “When she died, it was enough to upgrade my mech and here we are.”

There was another of those shared laughs and Genji waited for a beat before asking, “So, Kitakaze just hopped in your mech, huh?”

“Little devil. It hopped in, fell asleep and was such a pest. It wanted this and that and dango and God only knows what. The only thing that seems to have been good enough was going swimming.”

Genji nodded took a half step closer to her. “You okay? You seem like you....”

“I guess I’ll miss the little beggar,” she admitted ruefully. “But... damn, I don’t know what you make or what life is like as a part of Overwatch, but you must make a mint to afford all of the food and treats and swimming and stuff.”

“Not so much,” Genji muttered sourly. “More like we’re a little better prepared for all kinds of eventualities.”

Katrina nodded and gestured towards him. “So, what about the gear? Did they give you—?”

He nodded slowly and whispered, “I’d tell you about it but—.”

“You could tell me about it but you’d have to kill me or something.” Katrina laughed alone, painfully aware that it probably wasn’t a joke to him. “Never mind. Bad timing.”

“Not at all,” he whispered. “Just.... Hey, would you like to go get a drink? Something to eat?” He pointed down the road. “There’s a 24 hour cafeteria a few miles down. A late night bar in town but it closes soon.”

“You’ve been here before?”

Instead of answering, Genji tapped his helmet. Then there was one of those awkward silences again. Finally he shrugged. “You don’t have to. Just... it’s....”

“It’s what.”

“It’s been a long time since I was able to talk to someone like this. It’s kind of nice.”

“You charmer.... I’ll bet that you say that to all the girls.”

“Not really. Well, maybe a few. Maybe more than a few. But I really mean that I want to talk to you.” He gave another elegant shrug. “And you’re the first one that Kitakaze has liked enough to go on a ride along with.”

“Oh. I guess that you could say that I have good references, huh?”

“And it means that Kitakaze will be very happy, too.” He cocked his head and she could just about see the wide eyed, puppy dog expression in the smoothly curved reflections of shadows. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint Kita, would you?”

“Tomorrow.” She gave an anxious laugh. “I really do need some sleep.”

That made the lithe form of the ninja start in an uncharacteristically jerky way. “Really? You... you mean it?”

“Sure. Let me have some sleep and some breakfast and we can meet somewhere.”

He tilted his head. “Are... you sure? I mean, we can.... Would... six o’clock be good?”

Katrina nodded slowly with a yawn. Stretching out, she couldn’t think what to do and so she nodded again. “I have a little bit of cash that we can get a real meal. Or I can get a real meal.” She frowned at him. “Do you—?”

“Yes, I eat. I love eating, actually.” He jerked and scratched the back of his helmet. “Anything is good by me and as long as Kitakaze can get ice cream, we’ll be good.”

“Ice cream?” She puffed out a playful sigh. “I suppose the demon dragon would want a dessert.”

“Umm... so, okay. We’re... really going to meet?”

“Sure. Six o’clock tomorrow evening.”

“Okay. Sure. Tomorrow evening.” His voice dropped a few notes and his shoulders seemed to slump. “I guess... good-bye.”

“Good night.”

“Oh. Yeah. Good night.”

Katrina watched as he gave her an irreverent salute and then slunk away into the dark shadows. There was something undefinably wrong with his posture now, something.... She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he was suddenly different now.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t think for a moment as her head throbbed. It had been a long few days and she wanted—needed—sleep. Lord, she needed to get to her bed and lay down. She was aching in every part of her body. Stumbling back to the room, she was relieved to find that there was still a bed and she still had her overnight bag. Gulping down some pain killers, she laid down and stared at the almost empty room.

Why was the room too quiet now?

She rolled and thrashed her pillow. Mashed it down under her head and tugged the blankets up to her chin. She was too hot now, so she kicked the sheets until they were pulled up from the bottom of the bed and stuck her feet out. The room was too quiet for a number of minutes and Katrina got up and ran the sink in the bathroom for a few minutes.

It was not the rumbling purr she was looking for.

Frustrated, she fiddled with the thermostat and the boxy unit under the window rumbled to life. Growling, she went back to bed. It was something—a little break in the silence. And now it was a bit cooler, so she could tuck her feet back into the covers.

She cursed under her breath.

It had only been a few days. She had been alone for a long time. She had not known the little devil more than a few days—at most. It had been a pain in her ass the entire time, too. What the hell did it think? That she was its buddy now and she’d just go along with whatever? And what was with that metal man? Breaking into her room like that?! The perv probably wanted her to be in the shower. Breaking in the room when she was naked was exactly what he wanted.

Katrina took in a deep breath.

All of this bad tempered ruminating wasn’t getting her anywhere. 

So, instead, she began counting. Counting robotic sheep leaping over an electric fence. Not working. She couldn’t think what would help. She wanted a drink. She wanted something to do, something to punch. Or to shoot at.

What was she supposed to think about? Good things. Her mother said that good thoughts made good dreams and good dreams made a good night’s sleep. Somewhere or other, she had started going through the rainbow as she thought about good things. Her mother said that she was “all over the place” and it seemed like even putting her nighttime musings in color order helped.

Pink.

Bubble gum. Baby blankets. A pink watch she had as a kid. Strawberry chapstick. The pink hair her mother wore to “spruce things up”. A sunrise.

Red.

Cinnamon candies. Red candles for Christmas. Red satin ribbons. X32 lubricant for her mech. Red velvet gloves. Cherry jam. Strawberry jello. Red roses. Candy canes. Cherry juice. Red leather boots.

Orange.

Honey. Mums in the fall. Tree leaves in autumn. Oranges. Pumpkin cakes and gingerbread children. Golden sunsets. Silk. Orange tea. Golden fried chicken with orange sauce. Old wooden furniture. Blond curls on babies. Chicks.

No. Chicks were yellow. Switch to yellow.

Dandelions and buttercups and daffodils. Sunflowers. Lemons. Lemonade so cold it dripped on the outside. Playtime golden coins and flags at children’s fairs. Sweet lemon candies. Comic book prints with sunny beaches. Golden yellow fairy lights. Bananas and banana pudding.

Green. A soothing color. The color of spring.

Fresh grass. Mint and green tea. Stained glass. Heavy branches of willow going down to a pond. Green lights in traffic. Green apples. Little lizards.

Glowing green dragons.... Floating in the air hazily....

Green lights against metal like against snow....

The morning dawned and Katrina slept right through it. In fact, she missed lunch, too. She finally woke up just after one o’clock, got up to brush the crud off her teeth and take a shower. She needed a breakfast of some kind, but most importantly she needed coffee. Of course a cheap place like this didn’t offer amenities, but if Genji was right, there was a cafe nearby and she could walk that far.

She had a few hours to kill.

The cafe was about two miles away. Not bad coffee. Eggs and toast and whatever the hell scrapple was for a pittance. Then there was more coffee as she listened to whatever was playing on the speakers. She paid in cash and tipped decently and the elderly waitress insisted on bringing her a foam cup with more coffee.

There was nothing to do when she got back. She had a few novels on her phone. The flat television offered three channels that were in English and weren’t almost completely static. A news report. A soap opera that was almost ridiculous as two women discussed whether the maid was sleeping with the butler. A cooking show that featured ingredients she had never heard of.

At five thirty, she figured that she needed to do something. When she glanced outside, the other mech was gone, but maybe her date stuck around. Not really. She didn’t know whether to be happy he was gone and had taken that pesky beast with him. Or sad that she got stood up.

But at any rate, she would be up and in her clean shirt. She would be packed up at least—and she took her bag to her rig. There wasn’t a reason to stick around more than one more night. She’d meet him and eat and move on.

If he was still here.

They hadn’t really set up a plan that she could remember, and Katrina could only fiddle idly with her phone as she waited. The television wasn’t at all interesting. Of course, neither were the novels she had, but it was better than nothing as she watched the time count down.  
At 5:45, she heard a knock at the door. Peeking through the peephole, she saw the girl from last night standing there with an enormous bubblegum bubble and earphones with cat ears sticking up. She had on a stylish pink jumpsuit with a hoodie with what might be a cat or a rabbit print on it. Opening it slowly, she stared and whispered, “Umm... hey. I don’t think.... Um....”

“Hey.” The woman looked her up and down thoughtfully and then smiled. “Kita says you’re cool. That you drive a mech,” the other woman grinned.

Katrina grabbed her wallet and the room key before coming out. “Umm... yeah. It’s over there.”

“I’m Hana. You may have seen me on television or in magazines. I led the Blizzard Pro League for South Japan play last year.” Katrina looked at her blankly but Hana kept going. “It’s okay. Fans are usually overwhelmed.”

“Well, I saw you last night,” Katrina murmured with an indistinct gesture. “With the... the...?”

“The PS9 XL? Oh, really? You saw me beat Negaton?” Hana smiled widely despite Katrina’s somewhat blank face. “Wasn’t it cool? Blizzard really knocked it out of the park with the boss battle graphics, didn’t they?” Katrina barely got a nod before she asked, “So how did you meet Kita? Did you really take him swimming? Why did you take him? Why—?”

There was a soft beeping in her earphones and she gave another warm smile. “It’s okay. We can talk later. Genji just signaled that he has a table.”

“But... why....?”

Hana gestured for Katrina to follow her. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the transport. It’s not far.” Hana nodded and gave a bubbly smile as someone else came out of their room and they walked past. “So, I guess this is kind of new to you. We’ll go to the transport and you can go out to the bar.” She shrugged and blew another bubble idly. “I guess that you and he hit it off, huh? You’re the first woman that Kita ran off with. Can you believe it? He’s never done that. I thought that he wasn’t the type to do that but I guess that you never know.”

“He?” Katrina gaped. “Is...?”

“Well, I don’t know, but Kita never objects when I call him that.” Hana chuckled and shrugged in a youthful way. “You know, it might be interesting to see if we called Kita a girl. I wonder if Kita even has a gender or if that’s something that just isn’t a thing, you know? I mean, we can try it and see what happens.”

Katrina smiled at Hana kept up her bubbly conversation with... herself. There was a dusty nondescript vehicle that was running at the end of the block and Hana tapped on the window. It rolled down silently and she nodded at whoever was inside. Then, quite calmly, she waved at Katrina.

“What?”

“Yeah, so lots of people know me, but a whole lot of people know Genji. And Kita can’t be hidden, you know? So, you have a driver and you can get to the wherever and back without lots of crap.” She gave a little wave and tapped the door to the car. It opened automatically, which made Hana giggle. “Then I’ll leave you to them. It’ll be okay, trust me, and then maybe we’ll meet up again and get some girl time.” She laughed again and nodded. “And tell Kita I said, ‘hi’, okay? I couldn’t get him to stay with me, so tell him that I’m going after Negaton’s second form tonight so that I can finish writing the review.” She gave a V salute with her fingers. “And you can follow me on social media. Do you have a handle? Have you done the Blizzard Player’s Choice voting yet? Genji knows my info—what’s yours?”

Katrina plopped down in the car under the barrage of questions. It was actually a relief to have the few minutes of silence as the car got underway. The driver who looked like an overprotective soccer dad didn’t say anything more than a brief greeting and to show an official looking ID. The car drove around the town and pulled up at a nicer chain restaurant. Then, quite efficiently, she was let out and given a card to call him to take her home.

As dates went, so far this wasn’t awful.

She saw the bent form in a curved, crescent booth in the far corner of the place. If he hadn’t been fiddling with some little device, she might not have seen his metallic fingers and known it was him. She honestly would have dismissed him as a vagrant that the staff was too kind to throw out. But there couldn’t possibly two people with two Omnic hands, could there?

Katrina paused as she looked at the table with its holographic tablecloth. You couldn’t tell the real thing from the hologram these days—not without touching it—but it was what all the nice restaurants did to look classier than they were. Some of them would even wrinkle and wave and appear to fold around legs and purses and arms like a real cloth, all without the cleaning costs or sanitation or natural material consumption as a real cloth.

Genji wasn’t paying attention to anything, just fiddling with a little phone and what appeared to be a texting app or something. The artificial tablecloth appeared to fold around his legs and drape almost onto the bench of the booth beside him. His shoulders were slumped and not even the Omnic waitresses whirring past him with musical little whistles seemed to rouse him from his concentration. It couldn’t be a good move to startle him.

The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a bad idea to spook him. He had knives and whatever last night, and even if she didn’t see anything, he probably was armed. So, quite logically, she called out, “Hey there, handsome.”

He jerked up and looked over his shoulder. The mysterious helmet with its green visor nodded at her from under the hood. “Oh... hey.” He leapt up to his feet only to hit the table and make the tablecloth shimmer before it reset to a flat wall of light. All of the silverware rattled and the salt and pepper shakers toppled. “Sorry about that. I... I wasn’t sure that.... Well... that is, I really wasn’t....”

Katrina laughed to see Kitakaze’s head peek out over the edge of the booth. A long green tongue flicked out and it shook its long hair. Walking up, she stroked the flowing mane and then sat down across from them.

Genji gave an anxious cough and waved. An Omnic waitress rolled up and took their order—a special dinner with mac and cheese, salad and an extra side of broccoli and then a ginger and tonic with whatever the Omnic RRLX supplement was. The waitress nodded with a generic greeting and then rolled away only to return with two waters and a small silver box.

He nodded with a soft thanks as she slid the box to him. Finally he looked up at her and shrugged. “I’m... err... glad you found the place.”

Katrina watched as Kitakaze’s paw reached out to the box. Absently, Genji flicked his hand and the dragon retreated to become only a pair of horns and an eye over the edge of the table. “Yeah, well, I... guess that... I did. Sort of. The driver did, actually.” She glanced around at the few occupied tables in the section. “And, honestly, if I hadn’t seen your hands, I might not have found you with your hood up like that.”

That did make him laugh and nod. “Well, I am very glad you did find me.”

Katrina watched as the horns lowered slowly, only to snap up again as soon as she spoke. “Umm... Hana said that... lots of people know you.” She stroked the side of the water glass idly. “I guess that could be a problem.” 

Kitakaze’s head shot up and a paw slid up to grab the pepper shaker and snatch it down to the seat. Genji held up one finger and tilted his head. Katrina frowned in confusion right up until she heard a soft sneeze and saw a few green sparks fly up. Then, quite calmly, Genji reached down and put the pepper back on the table, ignoring the long scratches on it. “Yes. Occasionally it can cause a problem.”

Katrina giggled as she heard another small sneeze and a soft mumbling. “That right?”

Genji held up his hand to his cheek and pointed towards the dull glow beside him. “There might be other reasons to keep a low profile, too.”

She couldn’t resist it. “Whatever do you mean?” They laughed together as another snort sounded and—thankfully—the waitress came back with a loaded tray that she efficiently unloaded on the table, settling little plate after little plate in front of Katrina and then a pretty tumbler of fizzy drink what appeared to be a strangely shaped tureen with a cover in front of Genji. She favored Kita’s antlers with a wink, which made Genji laugh. “I can’t imagine.”

Two more people came in and sat in a nearby booth. Katrina gave them a glance—a harried looking woman in a splashy, colorful t-shirt with some kind of writing on the front, ripped jeans and a huge purse and an older man who looked tired and gray with thinning hair and white socks, black sandals and khaki pants under a similar t-shirt—and dismissed them as harmless. Genji looked at them too—a habit she suspected—and then tugged the hood a little further over his head. The pair was sweating and immediately began coughing and waving at a passing person with a tray of dirty dishes.

Katrina and Genji both began staring at the dishes and she saw that both of them reached for cups idly. The waitress whirred over with a cheerful chirp. She picked up her fork and saw Genji move the little box down to the seat beside him. Kita made a little sound, but abruptly there was no green glow beside him.

“Hey there! What is this?!” bellowed the man. Katrina couldn’t help but glance anxiously at him as he pounded the table. The Omnic backed up slightly with a sad whir. “I came to a nice place to eat with my wife!”

A young man in black pants, efficient shoes and a polo with the restaurant name on it rushed up. “Hello, sir. I’m uhh... the manager. Is something wrong?”

“I didn’t come here to be surrounded by a bunch of rust buckets and shit,” he insisted.

The woman with him snarled and slammed her purse on the table. A few buttons seemed to jump out of the top and then clattered to the floor. Katrina looked at one saying “Human Rights First” with a double series of blue dots under a red circle with a slash through it. “I don’t see why we can’t get a real server, Harold.”

“I know, Dot.” He lurched to his feet and waved his finger in the youth’s face. “I came here for a good time with real people—not to eat oil spills.”

“Um.. I’m... sorry?” The manager flushed and gaped as the two seemed to get angrier and angrier. “I really can’t.... I mean—.”

“You owe us,” the man roared as his face turned red. “I am here with my beautiful wife and it’s our anniversary and we’re tired from a busy day and you are ruining our evening. We demand a—.”

Genji gave a sigh and Katrina’s eyes went to him as he bent his head. He gave her a shrug and rose gracefully to his feet. Walking over, he tossed his hood back. “Good evening. Is there a problem?”

The pair looked up at him and Katrina flushed to see them puff out their chests and the “Human Rights First” logos on their t-shirts. Both of them went red and began heaving. Finally, the woman glared at him and snapped, “Who do you think you are, Omnic? Don’t you know to leave real people alone?”

“Dot! We’re gonna go!” The man puffed out his chest and he glowered at the manager. “You better believe that we’re going to report this to every site out there. We’ve got thousands of followers and we are going to tell every one of them that you run a robot loving machine shop. The health department is going to shut you down. We were going to spend lots of money on a nice meal and now you’ve ruined it!”

The woman stood up and her purse slammed against Genji’s hip. Genji rolled back half a step and she pointed her finger into his chest. “You are horrible. An abomination! How can you even be here with normal people?! Leaking oil and God knows what everywhere. Worse than an old Chevie. Don’t you have something to do?! Away from normal people?”

Genji held up his hands and calmly said, “Why not step outside and—?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. Like we’re the problem. You old models are constantly breaking down, needing fixing, anyway. Maybe you need to be shut down permanently and then we can get some peace.”

“Yeah!” growled the man as he shoved past Genji to stand by his wife. His eyes went down and up to stare at Genji. “I don’t want a robot leaking all of my food.”

The waitress whirred, “Our latest rating by the Department of Health was a 95% and—.”

“Shut up!” they both bellowed.

The wife pulled out a phone and began taking pictures of the servers and shocked restaurant. Genji held up his hand and said, “Please, could you take your seats and we will—.”

“Listen to that, Harold—the robot is telling us what to do! Stupid robot!”

“Ma’am, I am not a robot.”

“Of course you are,” she insisted.

“Please do not—,” Genji said evenly.

“You better believe that I am going to post this everywhere. Now he’s gonna tell us that he’s some kind of security, Harold—.”

“Well, actually—.”

“You go run off, robot. This is human stuff,” Harold insisted. “I’m talking with the manager.”

“Please, sir—.”

The manager tried to speak up, “Please sir. Could we—?”

“Dot—we’re leaving,” the man shouted. “I don’t want a robot poisoning you.”

Harold whirled around and tugged on his wife’s arm. She dug in her purse and began dropping buttons on all the tables. Finally, Dot saw Katrina sitting at the table. She pursed her lips and slammed a button down. “Don’t you hate it when robots take over a place like this?”

Katrina gulped and shoved the button aside. “Really, can’t you just leave?!”

Immediately Dot took out her phone and snapped a picture. “Oh, a robot lover!” She sneered angrily and snapped a second photo. “Doesn’t a real man do it for you any more? Or is it that you’re all loose—.”

Genji growled and grabbed the woman’s phone. “Ma’am, please, we can discuss this outside.” He jerked it up out of her reach. “We don’t need to make a fuss.”

Harold snatched the phone away and tugged Dot back to him. “Stupid robot. Keep your feelers to yourself! I’m calling the cops. All of you are going to be arrested for a malfunctioning robot!”

“I have already called the authorities,” Genji murmured dryly.

“They are going to drag you off and melt you down,” Harold growled.

“Oh, thank God,” whispered the manager as two uniformed officers walked in with wide eyes. He pointed to the couple. “Please!”

Dot let out a theatric gasp and slapped Genji. Katrina winced to hear her hand hit and the reverberation and Dot seemed to tear up and cradled her hand. The officers began weaving around tables. Her eyes went to Katrina and then Genji and she spat in his face.

“That’s it,” said one of the officers as they rushed forward. “Ma’am, you’re under arrest.”

“It’s not like that bucket of bolts has feelings or anything,” shouted Harold. He stood in front of her and held his hands up. “We’ve done nothing wrong, officers.”

“Okay, could you come with us?” the officer said.

Dot glowered at Katrina and kicked the table. “Robot lover!”

Everyone watched in shocked silence as the police hauled the cursing pair out. Genji walked over and offered the phone. “This is the lady’s phone.”

“Right,” the officer muttered. “Thank you. Say—aren’t you Genji?”

“Umm....” He glanced over at Katrina anxiously. “Look, I don’t want any trouble. I’m here with a guest and we would appreciate privacy.”

“Sure thing, sir,” he said.

Idly, Genji pulled out a small card and handed it to the police before coming back to the table. He shook his head sadly and watched as the police hustled away. Finally, his helmet came up to her and he put the shiny box back on the table. “I am sorry about that.”

Katrina let out a breath as things seemed to calm down. The Omnic waitress rolled away and people went began to stare at their food. No one seemed to meet anyone else’s eyes. The manager rolled his eyes and began speaking to each table and digging coupons out of his pockets. Finally, she looked back at him. “What... was all that?”

He nodded at another table and looked at her again as he tugged up the hoodie. “I am really sorry. That happens sometimes.” Katrina watched as he seemed to shrink down in the seat. “If it helps, you can leave. No one would blame you.”

She nodded uncertainly. “Thanks—I guess—but what was all that about? I mean, she was—.”

“It’s fine, really. I am not going to be offended.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Stupid aren’t going to run me off.”

Genji nodded and his voice went flat and emotionless. “No, I am not a robot. A robot is legally defined as having a specific purpose without the ability to self modify its procedures. No, it is not unhygienic or unsafe to have robots in a restaurants. It’s not even unsafe to have Omnics in restaurants and international treaty allows—.”

“No, really—stop.” Katrina poked at the plate of macaroni and cheese. “I... just don’t... get it.” Shaking her head, she finally saw the box. “Why don’t we start again?” She held out her hand over the plates. “I’m Katrina.”

He let out a metallic chuff that might be a laugh. Very slowly, he took her hand and shook it. “Hey, Katrina.”

She nodded and gestured towards the box. “Nice to meet you. So, what’s the box?”

He tapped it lightly. “The OmnicCorp RRLX Supplement pack.” Sliding the top back, he took out two small tubes and connected one side of one tube to a small thing on one forearm and attached the other end the box. The other tube went from the box to a small spout on the tureen. “It’s got a long and complicated explanation but the short version is that it includes all of the lubricants and micro supplements to keep running.” He looked up at her as a brilliant green goo began sliding down the tubes towards him. “This is not harmful to humans and is considered to not be a bodily fluid if the injector leaks—.”

“No... Just....” She clenched her eyes and put down her fork. “Look. I don’t want to have a graduate degree in Omnics or robots or whatever.” Finally she pushed the dishes away. “Let’s just leave.”

Genji nodded and waved to the waitress. It rolled over and he tapped the small device to pay the bill. Finally, he rose and helped her to her feet. “I guess this has already been a disaster.”

The manager came up to them and said, “We are terribly sorry for the interruption folks. I’d like to offer you a coupon for your next visit—.”

“Forget it,” Katrina muttered sourly. “We’ll just....”

“Oh,” he blushed. “I am sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she sighed. “I am just going to hit the ladies and we’ll get out of here.”

Genji was still there when she came out and they walked out quietly. Finally, he said, “Look, I’m really sorry, Katrina.”

“Just get me out of the crazy,” Katrina sighed. “Can we just go somewhere else?”

Genji stared at her for a moment and shrugged. “If my lady wishes.”

“We’ll go to the hotel again. We’ll get pizza or something.” She stopped mid stride. “Unless you need that stuff?”

Genji shook his head. “I will be fine.”

“Great. And there’s the car.”

They climbed into the car and it smoothly took off down the street. Katrina sat back and grinned as Kitakaze appeared with a flash of sparks between them. “Kitakaze. Where were you?”

The dragon looked up at her. “Kitty kitty kitty kat.”

“Hey there. So what about you? What are you going to do now?”

“Eat dango.”

Katrina rolled her eyes. “That again?”

“Daaaaaannnnnngooooooo,” it howled as it flopped on the seat.

“No, Kitakaze-san,” Genji murmured. “We are going to get some pizza.”

The dragon’s form jerked and the head flopped back with a snap to the seat. Suddenly its legs kicked out and then folded on its stomach as its tongue sagged out of its mouth. It said nothing, but jerked its tail a last time as if it was in rigor mortis.

“And poor Kitakaze-san is now dead,” Genji laughed. “Poor, poor Kitakaze-san.”

Katrina poked it and the dragon swatted her hand with a pop. Giggling, she looked up at Genji. “I guess it’s dead, then?”

“Yep.”

“What’s gonna happen next?”

“I guess that you’re going to tell me that you’re really sorry and you’ll call me and then I’ll never hear from you again,” he sighed as he laid back in the corner of the seat. “And you’ll forget my number and—.”

“Hey! How on earth is—? What are you talking about?!”

“That’s what happens. It’s okay. I’m used to it by now.” He stared out the window. “It’s fine.”

Kita opened one eye that rolled between them. Seeing that no one was paying attention, it scrambled to its feet. Genji didn’t pay attention to it even when it crawled in his lap. Finally, the dragon nosed under his elbow and settled like an over spoiled cat.

Genji sighed and idly stroked the flowing mane. “It’s okay, Kitakaze-san. Just like normal.”

“I don’t like that!” the dragon insisted. “I don’t like ‘no’ or ‘rules’ or ‘captain’ or ‘responsibility’ or ‘job’ or ‘don’t’ or ‘never’ or—.”

“Drop it,” Genji snapped with a emotionless swat that it dodged.

“I don’t like ‘drop it’ or ‘no’ or... or ‘alone’ or—.”

Katrina grinned at the sputtering creature. “Kita,” she whispered, which made it go still and silent. “Leave Genji alone. He’s had a tough evening.”

The little dragon stared up at her and then crawled to her. “Help?”

“Help?” she repeated blankly.

It nodded slowly with an earnest expression and a soft paw on her leg. “Help.”

There was a plaintive note in its voice that made her scoop the little glowing figure up in her arms. “What is it, Kita?”

“Help.”

“What can I do, Kita?”

“Help... us.”

She stroked the long mane. “Baby....”

“Alone. Alone is bad.”

That made Genji shift and he snatched the dragon and plopped it in his lap. “Stop it.”

“Stop is bad.”

“Will you knock it off?!”

“No.”

Genji cackled hollowly. “I thought ‘no’ was a bad word?” The dragon gaped up at him. “So let’s leave the nice lady alone. And don’t say that ‘alone’ is a bad word, either, or I’m going to take your dango.”

That prompted another howl and flop down, complete with death rattle and twitching. “No... not the daaaaaaannnnnngooooo!”

Genji nodded and went back to looking out the window. “Just remember that.”

They pulled up to the hotel and the car stopped. Genji hopped out and walked around the car to open her door. “So, thanks for the dinner, Katrina.”

She climbed out, only half aware that Kitakaze had disappeared with a flash of green sparks. “Thanks.”

“I’ll walk you to the door,” he muttered sourly, tugging hood over his head. “I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t.”

“Fine,” she whispered.

He walked to the door and waited until she opened the door. “Katrina. So, I guess I promised you a pizza. What do you like?”

“Umm.. yeah. Pizza.” She waved into the room. “Let’s see if we can get pizza here without a disaster.”

He glanced around the parking lot idly and then shrugged. “I understand, you know. It’s not the first time.”

Katrina puffed out a breath. “Look, whatever you’re going on about, can we at least go inside?”

“Sure,” he said with a false smile in his voice. “Anything you say.”

Once inside, he stood at the closed door as still as only machinery can be. Katrina rolled her eyes and fiddled with her phone. “So, Pizza-Pizza has three stars and delivers here. Wendell’s has delivery here and is Chinese.”

“Whatever you want is fine,” he said impatiently.

“Okay, but remember you left it up to me.” She studied the phone screen a moment longer. “Kita liked Wendell’s, so we’ll get him two orders of their shrimp egg rolls and some sweet and sour shrimp and some hot-and-sour soup for you.”

That did make him chuckle and then jerk. “What are you saying?”

“Well, you are what you eat,” she shrugged pithily.

That made him relax—finally—and say, “So, you’re saying I’m hot?”

“Pu-lease! Why don’t you let me order?” She pointed to the singular chair in the room. “Have a seat and we’ll feed everyone.”

He slunk over to the seat and plopped down with a fluttering of the jumpsuit around him. He said nothing as she put in the order or when she added two tubs of hot mustard or an order of chicken ramen. Katrina plopped on the bed and sighed.

“So, you’re going through with this?” he asked idly, settling this feet on the edge of the bed. “This not quite a date?”

“Sure,” she replied, flopping back on the bed. “Let’s do this.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

There was an easy five minutes of silence before it got to Katrina and she asked, “So, people calling you a robot and shit happens a lot?”

He took down the hood and pointed to his cheek. “It’s an easy mistake.”

“But you’re not?”

“Got it in one.”

“So what are you?”

“Just Genji.”

“So, ‘Just Genji’, what normally happens at this point?”

He leaned back a bit further and stared at the ceiling. “Usually what happens is that the lady decides she doesn’t want a further acquaintance. We both do the song and dance that we’ll call or we’ll see each other again and noting ever happens.”

“I guess a bunch of stupid fanatics will do that to a girl.” Katrina kept staring upward. “And then you decide not to do anything?” He gave her a snort. “I mean, every communication device works both ways.”

There was a startled silence and then he laughed. “I suppose. But it’s kind of hard to keep it up, you know?” Katrina turned to look at him. “I’m just not someone who wants a shallow relationship. I don’t want a pity fuck or some weird metal fetishist who is aiming for Omnics.”

“What?”

He shrugged with his palms up. “Yeah, some people are just weird. A few are aiming for Omnic partners with the idea that it’s like in anime or porn that it’s hours and hours of sex and all kinds of... appendages and tentacles and parts that snap on and off like a doll.”

She rolled to her side and propped up on her elbow. “That’s horrible.”

“Well, it was... interesting the first time, but she never wanted....”

“What?”

“She never wanted just me.”

Katrina swallowed and laid back down. “That sounds rough.”

The knock at the door made them both jump and it took a second for Katrina to get up and go answer it. A girl with an Omnic leg handed her the paper bag with a cheerful smile, wished her a good night, and then dashed off to a small motorcycle.

Coming inside and closing the door, Katrina was surprised to see Kitakaze floating behind her with a roguish smile. “You stop that.”

“‘Stop’ is a bad word.”

“Fine. Bad words. Get down on the bed and we’ll eat.”

The dragon cheered and quite happily perched there like a cat as she began digging out small containers. She unwrapped the tub of hot mustard and then the egg rolls and set them in front of it. Then, quite calmly, she offered Genji the fried rice and the soup.

Genji stared at her for a moment before taking the small containers. “Th-th-thank you.”

“Sure. You’re welcome.”

Quite calmly, she began to pour a soy sauce packet over her meal. “So, I had no idea that people were weird for Omnics.”

“People are weird for all kinds of things.” He paused and cocked his head. “But, could I...? Well...?”

“What?” she mumbled around a bite of food.

“Kitty kitty kat—,” the dragon muttered.

“Will you stop that? I have a name and it’s Katrina,” she bit out.

“Kat...rina?” it muttered with a cock to its head. “Can he undress?”

Katrina blinked at the dragon. “W-w-what?”

The dragon waved its paw at its head. “Undress the face.”

She looked wildly at the dragon and the metallic form that was simply sitting there. “Umm... just the face?” It nodded wildly. “Sure, I guess. I mean, if you need to eat.”

The dragon let out a cheer and Genji finally moved to set the containers aside. With slow and deliberate movements, he pressed buttons and undid clasps and finally pulled out tiny tubes that dangled like the dragon’s whiskers for a moment. Then he pulled the metallic front away, leaving almost a bird’s beak shaped over his brow that nearly covered his eyes and metal piece under his jaw, which apparently was connected to a mesh of some kind over his throat.

“Yeah, you can stare at it, if you like,” he muttered sourly. “It’s not like people don’t stare all the time.”

Katrina blinked and looked down at her food. “Sorry. I guess it’s... hard.”

He gave her a flat grin and a short nod. “But I do like the fried rice. And ramen.”

“Great.” She kept staring at her food. “Let’s eat, then.”

Kitakaze gave a little cheer and delicately picked up an egg roll before slamming it in the hot mustard like a child dunking anything in chocolate sauce. It dropped the whole thing in its mouth and then gave her a thumb’s up.

He spoke again, softly. “Thank you for this.”

Finally her gaze went up to look into his almond eyes. “What do you mean?”

“For a meal. In peace and quiet and no weirdness.”

“Umm... I guess, ‘you’re welcome’? It seems so stupid to thank me for treating you like a normal person.”

He nodded slowly. “A taste of sweetness is hope to a man lost in bitterness.”

Katrina blinked for a moment and then glanced away. “Umm....”

He gave her a lopsided grin and a salute. “My brother says it. Of course, he says stuff like that all the time because he likes to sound wise and ineffable and very knowledgeable.” He slurped up a mouthful of rice. “He’s an ass—an insufferable ass—but sometimes he might be right.”

Katrina smiled. “Yeah. I guess that comes with the territory.”

“Oh? You have one?”

“No. But there seems to be one in every family.” They laughed together. “And, honestly, they are pains in the ass but if they say enough stuff, eventually they are right.”

“I guess. But it’s a pain in the ass until that happens.”

Kitakaze swallowed another egg roll with a noisy gulp, making them stare. Finally, Genji nudged the bed with his foot. “Be nice, Kitakaze-san.”

“Well, he won’t do that again,” Katrina snorted.

“Don’t count on that. Kitakaze-san has always gulped food down like a boa constrictor with a head cold.”

“There’s no more egg rolls.”

Genji cocked his head as the dragon poked the empty bags and containers. Then he burst out laughing. “I guess that would put an end to it.”

“Daaaaaannnngoooo,” whispered the dragon.

“Not again,” moaned Katrina.

That made Genji laugh harder—so hard that Katrina stared at him. “What’s eve... even... f-f-f-funnier is that... K-k-kitakaze doesn’t even.... God you’re gonna love this. He doesn’t need to eat.”

“WHat?!” Katrina bellowed, shooting to her feet. She turned to the little dragon as it sat there like a puppy, staring up at her curiously. “You mean that little, pesky, rotten spoiled brat harassed me for days when it didn’t even need to... to eat?!”

“He’s a spirit dragon,” Genji howled, holding his side. “He doesn’t need to eat. He just likes to.”

Katrina fell back and stumbled into Genji’s lap. “I don’t believe that! You would not believe the number of times that he howled for dango or whatever and pitched a fit when I didn’t give it to him.”

Genji wrapped his arms around her. “I know. That’s what makes it so funny. Here you were trying to feed something that cannot be fed. Literally, he cannot be ‘full’ because he doesn’t need to eat. But he likes the feel and the crunch and—for whatever reason—the burning of the hot mustard, so he keeps eating.”

Katrina stuck her tongue out at the creature. “You are a really, really bad dragon.”

It only floated up for a moment before disappearing in a flash of sparks again.

Genji finally caught his breath behind her. “I hope that you’re not really mad at him. He’s... really quite nice. He is good company and likes to help out.” She heard him sigh. “Really, he’s been good company for a long time.”

Katrina nodded slowly, staring at the suddenly empty space. “I guess.... Don’t tell him, but I’ll miss him.”

“He’ll know.”

Katrina pushed herself up and began picking up the empty containers. “I actually will miss you both. Even... Hana, I think her name was?”

“Hana’s a character. But she probably likes you.”

“Oh?”

“She would have gone off with her mech if she didn’t.”

Well, that was disappointing. “Oh.”

He stood up and helped her push everything into the trash. “So, this is usually the awkward part where we exchange numbers and... and....”

“Yeah. You’ve already told me about that part.”

“And you’ve already told me what you think about it.” He shrugged at her. “But... yeah. We’re kind of... here.”

Katrina nodded slowly. “I guess we’re here.”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged and pulled out another card from his pocket. “So, this is my card.” Katrina took the card and stared at it almost plain card stock. It had two lines—one saying “Genji” and a phone number with an extension. “I guess, if you want to call me, I can be reached here.”

“Oh?”

He tapped the helmet and then the armor. “Omnic armor. I’m tied into all kinds of networks and the Internet and computers everywhere. Literally any time of day or night, you can reach me.”

She nodded slowly. “I’d give you mine if you have a pen.”

He smirked and shook his head. “And that’s the only thing that the armor doesn’t come equipped with. But I can record you saying it.”

She rattled off, “912-555-9332.”

Genji nodded and her own voice came back through a speaker somewhere on his chest. “912-555-9332.”

“That’s neat. What else can you do?”

“Oh. All kinds of things. But you’ll have to at least meet me for coffee to find out more.”

“Sure. I’ll see you later.”

He paused thoughtfully. “Oh, I hope so.”

And then, with that, he let himself out. Katrina waited for some time to see if he or the dragon would reappear but there was only the soft sound of a car pulling away and then silence for a long time before she drug herself to the bed.

Two weeks later, she did call. Genji answered and said that he was in Switzerland, but Kita was fine. Kitakaze was in fact gender fluid—and could be male or female or neutral as whatever whim came up. He’d bring her some Swiss chocolate if they met again. He wanted to meet her for drinks, but he couldn’t say when that might be.

A month and a half later, she got a call again. As usual, it was all about serving her country and patriotism and baby eagles before they got to the final price. As usual, she was largely unswayed and finally doubled her price when they began talking about how she important she could be to her country. It was a long call—far longer—and definitely not Genji on the other end of the line. Immediately after hanging up, she did call Genji back and had a moment of good luck that he was going to be “working” that week too.

Sure enough, after the battle and after she had collected the box with her fee and random other bits and pieces, there was a glowing green dragon sitting in her mech and an Omnic man casually sitting on top of her mech.

“Going my way?” she called.

“Any time,” he purred as he jumped down.

“Great. You can load this on the back.”

He laughed and helped her tie down the crate to her cargo shelf. “Well, what do we do next?”

“There’s a cafe up the street.”

He nodded. “Too close—maybe the Tony’s Bar the next town over? They have great shots.” He paused thoughtfully. “And it’s owned by an Omnic, so there shouldn’t be any problems.”

“You’re on, but there’s not really a lot of room in my mech.” She looked at him. “I don’t suppose you want to ride on top?”

“Ahh... no. I’ll hitch a ride with someone else.”

She giggled and scooped Kitakaze up on her lap. It waved calmly as she lowered the canopy. Flipping on the speakers, she called out, “Last one there buys the first round.”

He gave her a thumbs up and leapt off to the shadows. Flipping switches, she began to plot the course to the only Tony’s Bar in a twenty-five mile radius. Kitakaze perched right at the vents, panting like a mongrel with its head out the window, as the streets began to fly past.

Tony’s Bar was not hard to find. There were two other mechs—construction mechs—parked there and she blended right in between them. Kitakaze must have felt cooperative and disappeared as she opened the canopy to climb out. Genji was even out in public without the hoodie and sweatpants.

“Two kamikaze shots,” he quite calmly ordered from the Omnic bartender, who only nodded and began mixing. “And the lady is paying for this round.”

“Of course, sir,” it answered with a mechanical nod and a twitch of its metal handlebar mustache. “Anything else?”

Katrina smiled. “Then he’s buying two mango daiquiris.”

“Of course, ma’am. Anything else?”

Genji took his supplements and a small hole appeared in his mask to allow him to sip the drinks. He sighed in satisfaction and nodded. “You have no idea how bad that tastes as it hits my system.”

“Ahh,” she murmured. “So that’s why you were going for the ginger and tonic.”

“The quinine is also helpful in preventing one of the problems with Omnic prosthetics. The Omnic mount points can cause some blood inflammation. It’s kind of like malaria, so the quinine helps.” The bartender served them their shots without an interruption and Genji tipped his drink to her. “But I really prefer this.”

She slammed back the sweet and tart drink. “Yeah.”

Genji giggled as the bartender slid two tall glasses in front of them, filled with a frozen orange beverage with dollops of ice cream on top and little umbrellas. “Mango daiquiris,” the bartender beeped.

“Oooo,” Katrina giggled. “I love it when they stick the cherry with the little umbrellas.”

Genji took a hold of his and ever so delicately pulled the toothpick out of the cherry. Leaning over, he whispered, “Kitakaze likes these.”

She only nodded and put hers aside on the bar napkin. Taking a deep sip, she was shivered at the frozen sweetness. “Mango is my favorite. Everyone does strawberry or mixed berry—but mango are the best.”

The bartender went past them with a cheerful chirp as Genji opened his mask to sip the drink. Katrina watched the drink go down in the glass with wide eyes. Suddenly, he spat out the straw and reared back, one hand around his throat and the other at his forehead.

Quite calmly, she asked, “Brain freeze. Sucks doesn’t it?”

He muttered something foul. Finally, he pounded the bar and leaned forward. “Crap. I.... Shit.” He took in a deep, noisy breath. “I think... my head is going to explode.”

“Take it easy, huh?” She took another gulp. “This is very cold and you could get a headache.”

“You think?!” he chuckled. Suddenly, he was laughing. “I haven’t had brain freeze in years.”

The bartender came back up to them to clean up. “Is there anything I can do?”

Genji kept laughing. “N-n-no. Just... bloody hell....”

“We do not have a drink by that name. Could I recommend something else?”

Katrina giggled as Genji finally got back to his drink and took a delicate little sip. “It’s fine. We are fine... really.”

“As you wish,” it nodded. “But I am required to suggest getting something to eat at this point.”

Katrina smirked and propped her chin on her hand and her elbow on the bar. “Sure. What have you got?”

“I’ll get you a menu.”

She stared at the colorfully decorated paper that the bartender gave her. “Wings. Burgers. And the Woozy Boozy Ice Cream Sundae.” She pushed it to Genji. “I... don’t see anything you... might want.”

The bartender gave a chirp and a nod. “We also have a selection of Omnic and robotic supplements.”

“Okay. One of the supplements and one order of a Bubba Belly Burger with no pickles.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

She giggled and pointed. “I’m also paying for a gin and tonic for him.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Genji sighed and gave back the menu. “I guess that’s what we’re getting.”

He got plugged into a little tub of whatever the green goo was and then the gin and tonic. “Thanks.”

“No prob.” She stared at the burger with the immense bun and toppings. A knife held the whole thing in place on the nest of thick cut fries. “And honestly a Bubba Belly Burger is not a bad thing.”

“What do you think?” he muttered.

“I think that I might get some hot wings to take back.”

He tipped the gin and tonic towards her. “I do appreciate that.” Waving at the bartender, he ordered two more shots. “The thing is, I don’t have much anywhere to go.”

“That’s okay,” she laughed. “We’ll find something.”

He paused and looked solemnly at her. There was a long moment of silence before he turned back to his drink. “Okay, then.”

Genji was peculiarly, strangely silent after that. He sipped his drinks and nodded slightly, but seemed to have no more witty comebacks. Katrina looked at him over the rim of her daiquiri and simply ordered the hot wings and two bottles of water to go. With the takeout box in hand, she fiddled with her phone until she found a hotel and booked a quick room online.

“Got it. How about we get out of here?”

Genji nodded and pushed everything away. “Bartender—check please.”

“I thought I was paying for... err... something.”

“Nah—it’s quicker when I do it.” The bartender showed him a glowing tablet and he waved a finger over the screen. It flickered a moment and then changed to a green screen with a check mark and a generic message thanking him for his order. “See? It’s easier when I do it.”

She stared at him and then the tablet. “I guess so. But that means I owe you.”

He giggled and nodded. “Okay, then.”

She wiped her hands on a napkin and began walking out after him. Showing him her phone, she whispered. “Room 214.”

“Really?”

She was sure she heard some new note in his voice. “Umm... yeah.”

He wove slightly on his feet. “Look, this.... None of this is set in stone. We had some good times—and hey, I finally got you to call me back—but I’m not going to set up a bar tab to get you in bed. That’s not part of this deal.”

Katrina’s eyes widened as he seemed to weave again. “Hey, man—if you’re too drunk—.”

“No. God no.” He steadied on the balls of his feet. “No... I’m just... really surprised. Really, really surprised.”

“And that makes you weave like that?” She smirked and whispered, “Look, let’s at least let Kitakaze eat.”

“Yeah—he’s been buzzing in my head like crazy.”

“So let’s go.”

She was at the hotel first and room 214 was somehow both obnoxious and nondescript with its gold, green and teal patterned wallpaper, golden carpet, and double beds. A television, a mini fridge, a bedside table with a plastic phone, two obnoxious lamps, and a low chest of drawers.

She set the box down on the corner of one of the beds. There was nothing to do, so she peeled off her boots and got comfortable. The usual things that she did when she was coming down from a job.

In moments, she heard the squall of tires from a motorcycle and then a knock at her door. She might have been concerned, but Kitakaze simply floated through the door to perch beside the box.

“Mine?” the little dragon asked.

Katrina stared at it. For some reason, its features were now more equine than reptilian and it had long eyelashes and the horns curved more. Not to mention that its voice was higher pitched and more musical.

“Uhh... sure, Kitakaze,” she murmured as another tapping came from her door.

Genji was on the other side with a grocery store bouquet of daisies. “Uhh... hi.”

She looked over his shoulder at the rumbling motorcycle in the parking lot. The helmeted figure nodded and she saw a small, glowing blue head peek out from the leather saddlebag. A blue paw gave a wave and then it ducked back into the pack. Then, as Genji waved, the driver waved back and drove off.

“We’re still on, right?” Genji handed her the flowers. “I mean, we’re.... You don’t love me for my dragon, right?”

Kitakaze gave a high-pitched coo and nod as she stepped back. “We are... but I....”

“It’s really cool,” he whispered. “It’s cool if we need a few meetings.”

“Just come in. Feels like rain.”

Genji walked in lightly and sat on the bed beside the dragon. “Kitakaze—would you like to eat?” He opened the box and a whoosh of spicy steam flowed out. “Here you go.”

“Cartoons,” Kitakaze said. 

“No cartoons. You don’t get cartoons until tomorrow.”

“‘No’ is a bad word.”

“You will rot your spirit brain,” Genji joked. “The last time I let you watch ‘Ninja Scroll’, you tangled over 1000 yards of string in your mouth, stuffed three toy mice with gunpowder and set them on fire at the cowboy’s door, and kept yowling about that’s not how resurrection works.”

“What?” Katrina gasped.

“Yeah. Three days chattering about various pieces of the movie and how resurrection doesn’t happen like that. He could quote the movie to me, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t make the string trick work.” He looked down at the dragon as it swallowed a chicken wing whole. “And then he was sick because it was tangling in his spiritual guts.” He laughed, “Don’t ask what he went on about with Vampire Hunter D. Or Akira.”

Katrina laughed, “So, no cartoons.”

“Until tomorrow. Then he can have an hour. Two if he can keep it under PG-13.”

“Enough about the glowing green pest,” Katrina smiled.

“Oh?”

Genji watched her as she gave a little pat to the dragon and came to the bed to sit beside him. Her hand went to touch his metallic knee. “Can we just... start with unmasking?”

Ever so slowly, he nodded and pulled off the mask. From up close, right next to him, she could see little red places where something rubbed, little marks here and there of old battle scars, and the soft little places where flesh met metal. Finally, she asked, “Does... that hurt?”

“Nah. Not any more,” he whispered. “Well, maybe a little. Sometimes the metal rubs when I get jostled around a lot.” Her fingers went to one mark. “I guess I’m used to it.”

He reached up and began pulling more latches and... things. Finally, he could pull what was a back piece off, and she could see a curly mop of green hair. There were more little marks and one ear looked like it had a bit of the top missing.

“You.... wow.”

“I know. It’s some pretty rough damage.” He shrugged as Kitakaze gulped another whole wing and then panted out green sparks. “But you know, it’s not like I’ve... stopped being me.” She smiled at him and nodded. “I’m still here. I have the heart of a man. I have... never... stopped being a real man.”

That made Kitakaze perk up and stare at him. Slowly, it floated to his lap and patted his cheek. “Kitakaze is sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Katrina murmured. “Can I ask what happened?”

“Bad hurts,” Kitakaze whimpered. “The old battle of north and south.”

She stared at the little dragon with a bewildered expression. “I’m confused.”

“It’s not important right now,” Genji grumbled with a smirk. It blew a raspberry at him. “What is important is... I am still... here.”

Katrina brushed a light kiss to his cheek. “I’m sorry it hurt.”

“I am still whole!” he insisted with a hiss. “I am still a man.”

She took his cheeks in her palms and turned him to face her. “You are. You are here.”

The metallic hands came up to her cheeks as well. “I can prove that. I can prove that—.”

“No, Genji—you don’t have to prove anything. Not to me. Not to anyone.”

His eyes glistened wildly into hers with an almost fever bright intensity. “I... I.... It kills me. That yo-you might see... me as a robot. An Omnic.” Tears filled his eyes. “I am not a... a machine.”

“You are real,” she whispered back. “I know.”

He brushed her lips softly, trailing a kiss to her cheek and then pausing to nibble her earlobe. A gentle brush of fingers over her neck and tracing every smooth curve of her collarbone. “You are beautiful.”

“So are you,” she sighed as he felt his fingers begin to pull up her shirt. Her fingers went to run through his hair she smiled at the vibrant color and the faintly gritty-oily feeling from sweating under the armor. “You are too.”

He twisted and kissed her palm. “Baby, you are my... my miracle.” He muttered something in Japanese before he closed his eyes and sighed. “You know... you are free to go. You don’t owe me anything and you don’t have to do this.”

Katrina grinned up at him mischievously only to grab his cheeks. There was a strange and thrilling dichotomy to feeling the bits of warm metal, the flexible mesh and then the softness of the warm skin with just a dusting of stiff stubble. “Just kiss me.”

He chuckled and nodded, ignoring the silver drops that fell and hit her skin. “Whatever you want.”

The first brush of his lips was a kiss of a butterfly and so light and delicate like dandelion fluff. Katrina smiled, her eyes closing at the shivery and bubbling feeling blooming up. He kissed so softly and reverently, like she was holy to him. Then he touched her with one slender, silver finger to only brush a tendril of hair behind her ear and it was as if he could not bear the delight.

He did shiver when she pushed up to kiss him back. Then again when she ran just the tip of her tongue along his lower lip, tasting the sweetness of the mango and the tangy flavor of the gin. His spine vibrated in an addicting way, loosening and shifting so that his hips could brush his armor just beyond the feel of skin.

Somehow, the metal was warm and inhumanly smooth as her fingers found the back of his neck and curled the slightly longer hair that curled there. He groaned in his throat when her fingers explored the shallow grooves and lines down his spine. His eyes rolled up and closed and his hips thrust forward in response.

“You can—?” she whispered.

“That feels amazing. You feel amazing.” He smiled down at her, bumping his nose on the tip of hers as a blush lit up his cheeks. “You sure?” Before she could answer, he gave her a grin and a shrug. “It will be a bit different and... I’m totally cool with stopping. No pressure.”

She giggled, “And if I don’t want to stop?”

That made him pause, stop and stare as if he could not quite believe it. His face looked a little pale, then a little flushed. She nodded slowly and his grin was still shocked. “Well... okay. If you’re... you’re sure?”

Genji shook his head and pulled himself to the other side of the bed to lay down. “Look... I’m cool. We can do, like, date things. Movies or television or something.”

“Can I...?” Katrina cocked her head. “I’m... kind of not sure where to start.”

He smiled up at her and seemed about to say something with one of those eloquent gestures, but there was an immediate flash of glowing green and Kitakaze was there, perched up on its hid paws and giving something between a growl and a laugh. “I want to play.”

Genji said “Hey, you weren’t invited.”

“Yeah, you weren’t invited,” she giggled.

The dragon scampered around in a circle on Genji’s stomach, screeching, “Tickles! Tickle-tickle-tickle-tickle!”

The ninja howled with laugher and writhed as it kept going around and around. “S-s-s-stop, Kitakaze! Stop!”

Katrina snatched the wriggling creature and held it in a bear hug as Genji scrambled out of its way to the other side of the bed. With Genji out of the way, she dropped it in the middle of the bed. Trying to sound scolding and keep the giggles out of her voice, “You should know better, Kitakaze.”

It stopped, frozen on the bed, and perched on its back paws like a begging puppy. Glowing green eyes stared up at her in almost confusion and it cocked its head. “Why?”

“We wanted some....” Katrina flushed red as she tried to figure out what words to use to explain. “Look.... we just wanted some time to... to... ahh....”

It nodded wildly, with its mane flowing around in shimmering waves, and for a blissful moment she thought the little creature understood. It nodded again more slowly and looked up between them. “I’m hungry.”

Genji snorted. “You just ate.”

“I’m hungry!” it insisted. Then it flopped on its back with a dramatic howl. “Daaaaaaannnnngooooooo!”

Katrina sighed and flopped to sit down on the bed. “You always say that, Kita.” It nodded at her, content to settle its paws down to sit like a dog. “And you are very spoiled and need to learn to behave yourself.”

Genji climbed on the bed with an impatient snort. “And you need to learn to not cockblock me.” It twisted its neck until its head was nearly upside down. “It’s not like... well....”

Kitakaze looked between Katrina and Genji and back to her. “You are a girl person.”

“Um... I suppose I am,” she nodded.

The dragon looked back to Genji. “You are a boy person.” Genji groaned and nodded. “And you want to fuck?”

Katrina gasped with wide-eyed shock as Genji snorted and laughed and turned red. The dragon scratched its mane for a moment as both of them tried not to choke. Finally it nodded again and smiled in its toothy way, “You could have said so.”

And as they both sputtered helplessly, it disappeared.

Genji recovered first, “I am really sorry about that. Kita... is.... Well, it’s been just the two of us. For a long time, just us and... it’s really not usually that... well... that bad.”

Katrina gaped at him and the empty spot on the bed. “I... am astounded.”

He leaned against the pillows. “I guess that’s better than being scared.” He puffed out a breath that shifted the few strands of green on his brow. “I mean, Kita... really is a pain in the ass, but... but he means well.”

Katrina lounged back slowly. “Does this mean that its gone?”

“For a little while, anyway?” He shrugged. “Kitakaze does whatever seems to.... Well, whatever the hell it wants, honestly. I can’t even say that it’s all for the best or with good intentions. Mainly, it stayed back and hidden, but it really means a lot that you....”

She stroked the frizzy hair away from his face. “I’m... glad that it... he is my friend, too.”

Genji nodded with a smirk in his eyes before laying back and staring at the ceiling. “It’s not like there’s been a lot of people... a lot of girls, you know. There were before, but then, I got... got hurt and... now I’m trapped in this heap of metal. I thought... it looked so much better, you know, than the first set that they put together, but.. it’s not....”

Katrina put her head on his shoulder. “It’s okay, babe.”

“Kita isn’t that bad. I mean, things could be worse—I could have been stuck with Minamikaze or Yasashikaze. They are real assholes.” Katrina made a sympathetic noise. “At least Kita likes video games. And good food. And he likes to play jokes and have fun.”

“But he’s not....”

“He’s not like having a real someone special,” Genji whispered softly.

“Genji... we... it sounds like we got off track,” Katrina whispered. Her hand slid down his arm and she was relieved to hear him sigh and see his eyes close. “Tell me something. What do you want?”

Genji’s voice cracked slightly. “I want to... to be loved. I want to be cared for. Missed.” He shuddered as her hand went up his side. “I want a... a... family again. I want to... be seen... as a... man.”

“As a man,” Katrina whispered as her hand brushed over his chest. He let out a soft whine and shuddered. Quite slowly, he stretched out like a cat under her hand. It was a potent encouragement, to have him close his eyes like that. “Is this what you mean?”

“Don’t give me pity sex,” he whimpered. “I... I.... Oh, fuck...”

Katrina sat up and explored the man on the bed. For all that her fingers told her she was touching warm metal, his flushed face shudders said that she touched him. The little disks on his chest gave slightly, moving slightly as she brushed them. He shook his head violently as she pulled back and whispered, “Not so softly. They are... sensitive, but not that sensitive.”

So, instead, she rubbed them just a bit harder. “Is this it?” He nodded and bit his lip with a flash of white teeth. “Like this? Just a little bit harder?”

He nodded silently and managed to crack his eyes. In a raspy tone, he whispered, “What about you?”

She shrugged beside him. “I thought we were.... Going slow.”

“I want to... to rip your clothes off,” he bit out. “I want to tear them off of you and throw you down and... and...”

“Fuck?” she asked in a warble like Kitakaze’s high pitched voice.

Instead of laughing, he glared at her. His hands snapped into fists and his joints snapped harshly. There seemed, despite the unmoving metal, a tension and tightness now as his eyes focused on her. “I would fuck you into the mattress if you would let me.”

She was going to retort—to say something—but Genji rolled to grab her knees. “Genji....”

He was up in a moment, pushing her to lay down and stretch out on the bed. “Baby. You don’t.... Just—just look me in the eyes and tell me that you... you are okay with this.”

Katrina looked up at him. His face was so flushed, so earnest and sincere. There was no doubt in her mind that if she told him to stop, he would. He was sincere and willing and so desperate to please it melted her heart and sizzled in her veins.

He looked at her with wide-eyed worry. “Baby, you know that we are good. You know I’d wait forever for this to be right.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But I don’t think that Kitakaze would be that patient a second time.”

He flushed and nodded. “Hold on—I gotta... do something.”

Katrina looked at him for a dizzy moment, expecting him to get up, but instead he simply pushed little bits of his armor at his waist and on his thighs and the armor retracted or something with a his and snap and a small plate fell off in his hand.

Then, he was bare. There was an opening in the metallic armor and then ruddy skin. His cock was hard and red as she reached up to stroke it. He groaned and bucked forward into her palm, right up until the nest of crisp black curls tickled her skin.

“Oh, baby, that’s... so good,” he moaned. “Just like that.”

He bent clumsily and dropped one fist beside her shoulder. “Baby, I’ll make it good for you.” Her hands tightened reflexively and his grin widened. “Just like you are good for me.”

His kiss was as soft as before, but there was an urgent taste to it now. Katrina let out a soft mewl as his free hand undid her shirt, slid down the zipper to her loose pants and quite carelessly popped the button off so that he could somehow nimbly use that free hand and his toes to pull them down her legs.

He was quite cavalier about kissing her cheeks, brushing along her neck and earlobes before going down to suckle on her nipples. Quite nimble, too, since he could do all that without the slightest trembling on his locked arm.

She yelped as his teeth teased her skin. “Genji!”

“It’s okay, baby,” he purred. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” she whispered shakily. His fingers went to her core, vibrating softly. “I know you’re... a good... man.”

He laughed darkly and went to lick her breasts, teasing the exceptionally soft and sensitive skin under the nipple before returning to nurse on the tips as if he hungered. Another slender finger joined the first in slow pushes that felt like a gentle stretch within. He could rotate his hand, made it vibrate slightly as his thumb brushed the tight nubbin of her clit. When she let out a whine and thrust upward, he went sensually just enough harder to send thrills up her spine.

His teeth nibbled gently here and there as his fingers withdrew their teasing thrusts to gently scrape against her inner thigh, her breasts, her neck, her lips. She lapped at his metallic fingertips and he graced her with a smile.

“Feel good?” he whispered against her neck. “I know a few tricks I think you’ll like.”

She barely caught her breath as he pushed himself down. For a moment, he propped himself up on his elbows, his face smiling just below her belly. Just barely, he let a breath brush the crisp brown curls between her legs and let her gasp in pleasure at the unexpected pleasure the soft touch gave. Then he leaned down further, let his long fingers dig into the curls and then his tongue lapped at the musky, sweetly scented place.

Katrina could not stop cursing in her head—profane and rich curses as his tongue began brushing and then pushing in those heated, unexpected ways that made her blush and bite her lip. Long fingers stroked her, finding each place that made her shiver. His mechanical thumb could be warm metal or could vibrate in varying strengths. He could press it against her and have it pulse in short bursts of electric pleasure, or let it just barely move.

His teeth teased her clit and his tongue lapped at her. Everything seemed to unbearably hot, sweet and sweaty as he kept tormenting her with laps and kisses and those long, talented fingers with their superhuman flexibility.

And endurance.

He was indomitable, endlessly creative and energized as he led her through a dizzying spiral of pleasure, only to purr when she finally fell apart in climax. Then, he was there again, teasing and bringing her to life in the bed.

At last, as she gasped and whined, he climbed up and pressed his lips to hers. “Baby, let me know if this hurts,” he whispered.

With a cautious movement, he thrust forward. Then, he stopped there, his eyes rolling and fluttering shut as he was inside her. “Oh, baby. You are... divine.”

Katrina shifted, bucking up hard and loving the feel as he jerked. His fists slammed into the mattress and he shuddered again before thrusting in with an almost painful intensity. “Gonna cum for me, baby?” he asked softly. “I want you to cum on my cock.”

“Yes!” she cried out. Her legs clamped around his metallic hips and her hands slickly gripped his arms. There were curves, but no muscles to grip and instead, she pulled on him with her legs. “You... and me....”

His hips pumped faster and faster with unbelievable agility and smoothness that only Omnic joints could give. Then, he seemed to fall apart all on his own, his rhythm shattering and growing manic as he surrendered to whatever it was he felt. Then, his lips began wandering, lapping and suckling soft teethfulls of skin and teasing everything he could reach.

Katrina shrieked as the crisis approached and she could almost feel him throbbing inside her. There was nothing to grip. Nothing to hold on to as he kept going and finally she pushed her palms against the head of the bed. Then she whined again with his lips brushing her cheek because pushing down like that only pinned her harder and helped him get even deeper.

“That’s my girl,” he nodded in slurry, furred words. “Show me how you like it.”

“Just a little... more.”

Katrina went silent and still for a moment and then felt fire engulf her body. She pushed down hard, her legs locking him closer to her, and climax ripping through her. He felt it, heard it, and suddenly let out a cry as he trust hard into her. Everything trembled for a dizzy moment and clenched hard before releasing in waves of pleasure.

He didn’t move, not even a tremble, and for a heady moment the soft trembling of his cock rippled through them like a tidal wave. Then, it was like he lost all control and he sank against her. His body was warm and languid as he pulled back to lay down beside her.

“Katrina,” he sighed against her. “Baby, was it good for you?” She nodded sleepily. “I want to to be very good for you.”

Katrina murmured sleepily and he pulled the blankets around them. She grinned at him as he went around the room and checked the window and door and turned out the lights. In the dark, he climbed into the bed beside her.

“You okay, baby? Need anything?” he asked again.

“No. I’m fine,” she sighed into the pillow. “You okay?”

He curled around her, an arm under the soft swell of her belly. “Just tell me if you need anything. I’ll bring it to you. I swear.”

Katrina was about to say something along the lines of “shut up and let me sleep” when there was a shift in the air and a green glow appeared on top of them. Kitakaze peeked over the blankets, flicking a long green tongue like a curious snake.

“Are you done yet? I’m hungry!”


End file.
